This has been one of the fastest years of my life....my first with 2 children! My first to ever project manage a large event, my first at sitting on the boards of 2 wonderful companies, my first 3 week holiday, my first in my new home.....I could go on and on and on!
Nine Twenty Engineering & Manufacturing are racing towards year end and are as busy as ever (who says recruitment slows down in December!). But Christmas is a time to reflect and when I stop and take stock of our achievements, it makes me proud to be part of the Nine Twenty Group and proud to lead such a committed and hard working team.
We started our year as headline sponsor for the first ever CeeD industry awards which is an evening of fun and celebration. We hosted various tables across the event to ensure our close network could join us for a great night of fun and celebration.
In March I came up with the idea of our Insp-hire event and the partnerships and planning quickly went underway. I was naïve to how much time, planning and my life this would take up but I loved (almost) every minute of it and it was brilliant that so many people wanted to be involved and to help.
In May hosted a fantastic table at the Scottish engineering awards for another night of celebrating our wonderful industries achievements. As June arrived, it was time for me to head to Florida with the family for a much needed break.
On return, we were as busy as ever but with Insp-hire around the corner, our team really worked hard to dig deep to help pull the event together while delivering for our clients.
July arrived.... Nine twenty’s 15th birthday and of course....we celebrated in style with our team trip to Marbella. We had a ball! Our team work hard together and it was great to get the chance to relax and have fun in the sun as a team!
I joined the SmartSTEMs board and the CeeD board during the summer and feel honoured to be involved in supporting both these business in their strategy to progress.
In August, our first ever tv advertising campaign kicked off for our Insp-Hire event and the Nine Twenty children were lucky to be showcased. My wee boy started Primary School and enjoyed his 5 minutes of fame amongst his new classmates.
Then my baby turned 1.....how did that happen?
Our Insp-hire event in September was a huge success with over 900 attending. Our partners SmartSTEMs and GCU really helped the Nine Twenty team pull off a show stopper that really did inspire families to think differently about the future of the job market.
We were nominated for Gender Diverse Recruitment Company of the year at the SWIT awards in October and although we didn’t win, we were pleased to be recognised for our efforts in this space and enjoyed a team night out together at the awards.
Since then we have hosted work experience pupils, taken on our first team QA apprentice, hosted an IR35 seminar and all while attracting and delivering talent for our client base.
Our networks have continued to grow and we are lucky to be involved in some exciting and interesting projects to address our skills gaps.
Phew.....what a year!! I want to take this opportunity to thank my wonderful team who have helped make all of this possible. They completely live and breathe our company values and want to do the absolute best job they can and their results have been testimont to the hard work and effort they have put in.
So what’s in store for 2020?
Let’s just say we won’t be standing still. Nine Twenty don’t claim to be the biggest agency and nor do we want to be but we can comfortably say that we are solid in our delivery, creative in our solutions and can truly help our partners move their business forward. Our business has grown organically this year and team size has increased and we see this continuing into next year, we will host another insp-Hire as well as continue to support SmatSTEMs and CeeD, we have lots lined up and look forward to sharing this with our networks in the new year.
Thank you to the Nine Twenty family for their continued support, to my team who always go above and beyond, our clients and candidates who are so supportive of us and what we do,, to SmartSTEMs team for just being fab to have as a partner, to the CeeD board members for welcoming me to the team, to Skills Development Scotland team for being a great support for our initiatives and involving us in some of your projects, to GCU for hosting Insp-hire. There are some names I would love to mention but know you won’t want me to shine your lights....so to all my wonderful contacts who helped make this year such a success for us....THANK YOU!
Here’s to a wonderful Christmas and a great 2020!
Karen Stewart,
Director